Avaliação do ponto de equilíbrio e lucratividade aplicados a sistemas de produção de camarão marinho, no estado do Ceará, Brasil.

Abstract

Shrimp exports in Brazil made a revolution on seafood Brazilian trade balance. Since 2001, this balance showed a superavit due the consolidation of cultivated Brazilian shrimp sales in the main world markets, such as United States and Europe. However, in the last three years, this culture has dropping its production because of trade modifications in Brazil and worldwide. In order to review their strategies, shrimp producers had better planning and managing their production costs. One of the ways to analyze production costs was through the balance point and profitability. The main goal of this study was to apply the concept of balance point to marine shrimps systems of production in Ceará State, Brazil, and trying to demonstrate, in the current market situations, which would be the best chances of planning production and increasing the profitability and competitive advantages of shrimp producing units. The results have suggested that the shrimp farming units analyzed would have better profitability, if production planning would be based on intermediate shrimp densities (35 shrimps/m²) and minimum harvest weight of 9.56 g. Studies on economic stability of future shrimp farming projects in Brazil should approach such exogenous factors as selling prices, inputs and interest rates, with the aim of making available information on planning and management issues.